About me...
There is a saying to the effect that life is a journey and that the journey is more important than the destination – I really identify with that.
As Janet Paine I grew up in a Kentish seaside town, Herne Bay, with my six sisters and brother playing 'imagine' games and writing prize winning compositions in school. After the failure of my teenage marriage, I married my graphic designer boss, Mike Minshull, and we continued to work together in our advertising agency in Canterbury, adopting cats and dogs and walking wherever and whenever we could. In the late nineteen-eighties, at the toss of a coin, we sold our business and moved to the Lake District where my husband became a professional artist and I managed an idyllically located hotel on the shores of Ullswater. Whilst there I researched and wrote a brief history of the hotel (since sold and reverted to a private house), which is the basis of the current novel in progress. Watch this space!
I love walking, which along with my other loves: history, cooking and gardening, feature quite frequently in my novels. And here I am with Mike at the top of Kidsty Pike, one of the landmarks in the Coast to Coast walk.
It is hard to believe, but a few weeks after the above picture was taken, by a young man doing the Coast to Coast walk, Mike was told he had cancer. He survived to be present at the launch of my first novel Coast to Coast and I do believe he was more excited and proud than I was! Throughout the two years of his illness we were wonderfully supported by a Macmillan Nurse and in the final stages by our local Hospice at Home ~ two charities worthy of everybody's support.
When Mike died I felt my life was over, too. But life's journey goes on and an unforeseen route was offered - Allan Shepherd, an acquaintance from way back, returned to my life. He had also recently lost his wife to cancer and through supporting each other we became close, so close that after much soul-searching I moved to Scotland to be with him and we are now married.
Along life's journey I have acquired a large family: my brother and sisters have provided numerous nephews and nieces; four step-daughters have given me grandchildren, and (and I'm far too young for this) great-grandchildren. It will be no surprise that all my novels revolve around family dynamics!
The idea for my novel, COAST TO COAST, came to me on a walk. I had walked to the top of a mountain and although I could see for miles, my starting point had become obscured by the ups and downs of the ground I'd covered; my finishing point was concealed by the challenges yet to be faced. I knew where I was heading but the route I had planned had already undergone changes to overcome obstacles. Life is like that. So, I plotted my story about a woman in her middle years, with all the joys and regrets of half her life lived and a future ahead, but for whom recent events have caused doubts about her chosen route. To a greater or lesser degree, I think most women have been there.